Best Charts Baltic Sea for OpenCPN

[Dockhead]

Any tips? Free is best but I will pay if necessary.

[sailorF54]

Free: a recent world-wide folder of CM93 V2 charts

Commercial: digital charts from NV
NV Shop
with the NV plugin
PlugIns | Official OpenCPN Homepage
(Hope one user (Carcode ?) will confirm, as I have no personal experience with NV charts)

[cagney]

"soltek.se", provides all official charts for Sweden and Finland in BSB 3 .

The site is in Swedish, use google translate!

If you're not on windows, check notes on Chart Sources | Official OpenCPN Homepage .

Also, if you use the latest OpenCPN beta release, all the commercial ENC S63 charts are available. Check out o-charts
Thomas

[bcn]

NV charts are very commonly used in the Baltic.
There are several sets covering different areas.

If you need some selected charts you can also go with S-63 charts.
We have an user who is testing in Finland right now.

Hubert

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by bcn

NV charts are very commonly used in the Baltic.
There are several sets covering different areas.

If you need some selected charts you can also go with S-63 charts.
We have an user who is testing in Finland right now.

Hubert

NV charts are horrendously expensive!!

I was hoping there was something here like VisitMyHarbour in the UK, which sell a whole set of charts for complete UK waters for a very reasonable price.

Fresh, commercial charts specifically for OpenCPN

[bcn]

Dockhead,

you won't find a deal like the one from VisitMyHarbor for the rest of the world.
This is due to the licence and price policy of the Hydrographic Offices around the world. [US set apart]

UKHO is giving away chart sets for a nominal fee under some special license condition.

That's why we are discussing with HOs how to achieve a more logical solution for the leisure market. They are focussed on the commercial traffic and administrations. And have more or less severe pressure to be self financed or to make money. This will take time, I fear.

In the meantime working with actual electronic charts implies using charts from the grey market or getting the wallet out of the pocket.

If you have some background charts you are comfortable with, you might go cherry-picking by licensing the latest official S-63 charts for some determined zones.
Going for a 3 months licensing period instead of a year brings costs down by a good chunk.
After the licensing period you maintain those charts, but updates are ceasing.

As Thomas said: more info at o-charts.org, our OpenCPN gateway for that purpose.
And a call for lobbying for people with contacts at HOs

Hubert

[sailorF54]

That's a strange word we live in...
You can have up to date, superb vector or raster charts for peanuts if you use an Ipad (or to a lesser extend a 'droid tablet), but you have to put up with miserable navigation apps (iNavx (Navionics), Navionics boating, iSailor (Transas), Maxsea (Mapmedia), Plan2Nav (Cmap), Imray ...)
Or have world class O on a PC with a dearth of free (only US, Brazil, NZ...) or decently priced charts (UK), or even none at all in many areas (except CM93 V2)

PS As can be easily seen using the handy downloadable Primar chart catalogue java app
https://www.primar.org/media-centre
the coverage of S63 charts is not adequate for leisure boating in many parts of the world

[seandepagnier]

Maybe it's time we start to make our own charts. Starting with google imagery, we could use depth sounders with nmea output, and then people can sail in zig-zag patterns to make a chart. Obviously the coverage would be sparse in deep water, but this is where we care the least about it.

If someone can finance sending me a depth sounder with nmea output, preferably 200 meter depth, but less will do, I could probably work on a plugin to create charts. Then I would attach the depth sounder to my sailing kayak, along with gps, running into a raspberry pi, I could produce charts in every harbor I visit. Then we can start a website to distribute these charts as well as merge soundings data etc... Using our own format to allow users to verify, select and discard inputs, to refine the data over time.

[Rasbats]

In Europe Teamsurv is one way to go for crowd sourcing hydrographic data.

TeamSurv - Home

Teamsurv applies tidal height corrections to the soundings taken and filters out bad data. OpenCPN can already produce the raw material in a format suitable for loading into their computer.

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

NV charts are horrendously expensive!!

Depends. One of the things I like about NV is that when you buy a set of paper charts they give you a CD with the same charts in digital format. Quite a nice deal, which solves a common dilemma...